Former Liverpool chairman Sir Martin Broughton has revealed details of his conversations with the current club owners regarding their intentions to sell the club.
Back in November, it was announced that Liverpool’s owners, the Fenway Sports Group, was up for sale, saying they would “consider new shareholders if it was in the best interests of Liverpool as a club.”
Since then, a number of investment groups have been linked with having an interest, though so far, at a time that Manchester United are also up for sale, no offers have been forthcoming.
Sir Martin Broughton – who helped to expedite the sale of Liverpool from the despised Hicks and Gillett to FSG – has now opened up on conversations with current chairman, Tom Werner, revealing that the club are ‘testing the water’ regarding a sale rather than actively looking to move on.
“I was surprised but not astonished when I heard,” Broughton told the Liverpool Echo. “They have shown with Boston [Red Sox] that they are in it for the long term, they are not short-term investors going in for the short term and flipping three, four or five years.
“They have been here 13 years now and they saw the Chelsea deal and I think certainly realised that prices were maybe higher than they had in their mind of the increase in value that they had during that time, so [they said]: ‘Why don’t we test the market?’
“I spoke to Tom Werner and asked him were they seeking to sell? Were they seeking investment? What was the objective? And he said: ‘There isn’t one. We’re testing the water. If there is an offer that is a very high figure then we’d be daft not to look at it.
“‘If there is an investor that wants to come, we’d certainly be willing to look at that and we wouldn’t be at all surprised if we didn’t get either and we continued to hold it. We’re comfortable with that too. So it wasn’t that we have got an exit plan, it was more that testing the markets to see what is out there.’”
Broughton – who was part of a consortium that tried to buy Chelsea last year – doesn’t feel that FSG would just sell to the highest bidder should the offers come rolling in, saying that he thinks the Americans will sell to ‘the right people’.
“They have done a pretty damn good job of competing! The year they got 97 points – higher than anyone has ever had to win the Premier League – and still not win it was crazy. I think they have shown shrewder management. They have got a team with a fantastic manager but a team that has competed at the top level for quite a few years now without spending quite at the level that some of the others have.
“I would be astonished if they weren’t concerned about the legacy they leave. I don’t think they are people who will walk away [having sold] to the highest bidder, walking away thinking: ‘Well we got a great price, what a good deal, let’s move on’. I think their heart is in Liverpool now.
“And, yes, it might make sense to exit at some stage, whether that is now or in 10 years’ time, everybody exits at some stage. But I think it is important to them that they are custodians and that role is passed to the right people.
“I think they will be looking for somebody who is thinking long-term, yes. I don’t think they will be looking for someone who is going to spend ‘silly money’. I think John Henry and Tom Werner would always want to focus on a gradual change [in the squad]. The year they bought Virgil van Dijk and Alisson Becker, those were the two players that transformed the team. They filled the two gaps.”
